Regular readers of The Poly editorial pages can probably guess that I was not happy over last week’s election results. In fact, I spent a good chunk of Wednesday depressed and lamenting the election with friends throughout the country. I had hoped to be able to say here that I would no longer have to take up space describing how much I disliked President George W. Bush’s policies, but, alas, things did not work out in your favor, and I’ll probably end up writing more, despite Bush’s promises to bring America together.
I was reminded last week of everything I heard being said to supporters of Howard Dean last February and March, that just because their guy had lost, they shouldn’t be disillusioned with the process. I was last week, but I recovered quickly, because I realized that regardless of how you felt about the election outcome, the number one problem with our system isn’t the way we vote, it’s our candidates.
I would love to see some figures on how many people were actually voting for one of the major candidates and not against the other one. I know I was not thrilled with Senator John Kerry, and was merely voting against Bush. A few of my friends on the other side of the political spectrum did the same, voting for Bush merely because they were not satisfied with Kerry.
The two parties have stagnated in terms of ideas, and Americans are not really hearing anything new anymore. In terms of domestic policy, how many issues in this election were new? Health care, social security, taxes, balanced budgets; these are the things that are just peddled to the American people by the two major political parties year after year. It makes you think that they’re not making any progress on the issues just so they can reuse the same lines every two years.
I’m ignoring the other parties here, but that’s not without cause. Recent “third party” candidates, even from the national parties, have been unable to stir legitimate interest from the American people. Even H. Ross Perot managed to claim a significant chunk of the vote (19 percent) when he ran in 1992, and I think a lot of people would say now that his candidacy was even more of a joke than Ralph Nader’s.
I think there are two main reasons for this: most modern “outside” candidates run on the more extreme platforms in order to paint a difference between themselves and the major parties, which does not attract many voters, and the media not reporting on candidates that don’t fit into pigeonholes. I don’t think the wire coverage of the election that The Poly has run over the past few months even mentioned the Cobb, Badnarik, or any of the others.
This country is experiencing a real dearth of people who are willing and ready to serve their fellow citizens with new and serious proposals for fixing the problems in our country. We need people who are interesting and exciting enough to get by the media bias towards “quick and easy to report,” and who can attract donations so that they can run without the fundraising support of the big parties. I think everyone reading this now should take a look at their goals and see if they can fit public service in anywhere. I’m sure it would give you more personal satisfaction than sitting in a cubicle for 40 years, and for people looking to make a lot of money, what better job is there than one where you get to give yourself a pay raise?
